Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist Read online

  “While I should never have to defend my reputation as an antiwar activist, I am pleased to inform you that we have retaliated severely and with dispatch. Anywhere that Global Community weaponry was employed, it was aimed specifically at rebel military locations. I assure you that all civilian casualties and the destruction of great populated cities in North America and around the world was the work of the rebellion.

  “There are no more plans for counterattacks by Global Community forces. We will respond only as necessary and pray that our enemies understand that they have no future. They cannot succeed. They will be utterly destroyed.

  “I know that in a time of global war such as this, most of us live in fear and grief. I can assure you that I am with you in your grief but that my fear has been overcome by confidence that the majority of the global community is together, heart and soul, against the enemies of peace.

  “As soon as I am convinced of security and safety, I will address you via satellite television and the Internet. I will communicate frequently so you know exactly what is going on and will see that we are making enormous strides toward rebuilding our world. You may rest assured that as we reconstruct and reorganize, we will enjoy the greatest prosperity and the most wonderful home this earth can afford. May we all work together for the common goal.”

  While Carpathia’s aides and ambassadors nodded and clapped him on the back, Rayford caught Amanda’s eye and resolutely shut the cockpit door.

  Verna Zee’s car was a junky old import. It was rattly and drafty, a four-cylinder automatic. In short, it was a dog. Buck decided to test its limits and reimburse Verna later, if necessary. He sped to the Kennedy and headed toward the Edens junction, trying to guess how far Chloe might have gotten from The Drake in heavy traffic that would now be impassable.

  What he didn’t know was whether she would take Lake Shore Drive (which locals referred to as the LSD) or the Kennedy. This was more her bailiwick than his, but his question soon became moot. Chicago was in flames, and most of the drivers of cars that clogged the Kennedy in both directions stood on the pavement gaping at the holocaust. Buck would have given anything to have had the Range Rover at that moment.

  When he whipped Verna’s little pile of junk onto the shoulder, he found he wasn’t alone. Traffic laws and civility went out the window at a time like this, and there was almost as much traffic off the road as on. He had no choice. Buck had no idea whether he was destined to survive the entire seven years of the Tribulation anyway, and he could think of only one better reason to die than trying to rescue the love of his life.

  Ever since he had become a believer, Buck had considered the privilege of giving his life in the service of God. In his mind, regardless of what really killed Bruce, he believed Bruce was a martyr to the cause. Risking his life in traffic may not have been as altruistic as that, but one thing he was sure of: Chloe would not have hesitated had the shoe been on the other foot.

  The biggest jam-ups came at the bridge overpasses where the shoulders ended and those fighting to go around stalled traffic had to take turns picking their way through. Angry motorists rightfully tried to block their paths. Buck couldn’t blame them. He would have done the same in their places.

  He had stored the number of the phone in the Range Rover and continued to redial every chance he got. Every time he first heard a hint of the message “The mobile customer you have called—”, he disconnected and tried again.

  Just before the initial descent into San Francisco, Rayford huddled with Amanda. “I’m gonna get that door open and get you off this plane as soon as possible,” he said. “I’m not going to wait for the postflight checklist or anything. Don’t forget, it’s imperative that whatever flight you find is off the ground before we are.”

  “But why, Ray?”

  “Just trust me, Amanda. You know I have your best interests in mind. As soon as you can, call me on my universal cell phone and let me know Chloe and Buck are all right.”

  Buck left the expressway and picked his way through side streets for more than an hour until reaching Evanston. By the time he got to Sheridan Road along the lake, he found it barricaded but not guarded. Apparently every law enforcement officer and emergency medical technician was busy. He thought about ramming one of the construction horses, but didn’t want to do that to Verna’s car. He stepped out and moved the horse enough to drive through. He was going to leave the opening there, but someone hollered from an apartment, “Hey! What are you doing?”

  Buck looked up and waved in the direction of the voice. “Press!” he shouted.

  “All right, then! Carry on!”

  To make himself look more legitimate, Buck took the time to get out of the car and replace the barrier before driving on. He saw the occasional police car with lights flashing and some uniformed men standing at side streets. Buck merely put on his emergency flashers and kept going. No one stood in his way. No one drew down on him. No one so much as shined a light at him. To Buck it seemed as if they assumed that if he had gone to the trouble of getting so deep into a prohibited area and was now proceeding with such confidence, he must be all right. He could hardly believe how clear the sailing was with all the arteries leading into Sheridan Road blocked off. The question now was what he would find on Lake Shore Drive.

  Frustrated was too mild a word for the way Rayford felt as he landed the Condor 216 in San Francisco and taxied to a private jetway. There he sat with the unenviable task of carrying Antichrist himself wherever he wanted to go. Carpathia had just told bald-faced lies to the largest audience that had ever listened to a single radio broadcast. Rayford knew beyond doubt that shortly after takeoff toward New Babylon, San Francisco would be devastated from the air the same way Chicago had been. People would die. Business and industry would crumble. Transportation centers would be destroyed, including that very airport. Rayford’s first order of business was to get Amanda off that plane and out of that airport and into the Chicago area. He didn’t even want to wait for the jetway to be maneuvered out to the plane. He opened the door himself and lowered the telescoping stairs to the runway. He motioned for Amanda to hurry. Carpathia made some farewell small talk as she hurried past, and Rayford was grateful that she merely thanked the man and kept moving. Ground personnel waved at Rayford and tried to get him to pull the stairs back up. He shouted, “We have one passenger who needs to make a connection!”

  Rayford embraced Amanda and whispered, “I checked with the tower. There’s a flight to Milwaukee leaving from a gate at the end of this corridor in less than twenty minutes. Make sure you’re on it.” Rayford kissed Amanda and she hurried down the steps.

  He saw the ground crew waiting for him to pull the stairs back up so they could get the jetway into position. He could think of no legitimate reason to stall, so he simply ignored them, walked back into the cockpit, and began postflight checks.

  “What’s going on?” his copilot asked. “I want to switch places with your guy as soon as I can.”

  If you only knew what you were walking into, Rayford thought. “Where are you headed tonight?”

  “What possible business is that of yours?” the young man said.

  Rayford shrugged. He felt like the little Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike. He couldn’t save everyone. Could he save anyone? A Carpathia aide poked his head into the cockpit. “Captain Steele, you’re being summoned by the ground crew.”

  “I’ll handle it, sir. They’ll have to wait for our postflight check. You realize that with a new plane there’s a lot we need to be sure of before we attempt a trans-Pacific flight.”

  “Well, we’ve got McCullum waiting to board, and we’ve got a full flight crew waiting besides. We’d kind of like to have some service.”

  Rayford tried to sound cheery. “Safety first.”

  “Well, hurry it up!”

  While the first officer double-checked items on his clipboard, Rayford checked with the tower on the status of the outbound flight to Milwaukee. “Behind schedule about twel
ve minutes, Condor 216. It shouldn’t affect you.”

  But it will, Rayford thought.

  Rayford stepped into the cabin. “Excuse me, sir, but isn’t Mr. Fortunato joining us for the next leg of the flight?”

  “Yes,” an aide said. “He left Dallas half an hour after we did, so he shouldn’t be long.”

  He will be if I can help it.

  Buck finally hit the brick wall he knew would be inevitable. He had bounced over a couple of curbs and couldn’t avoid smashing one traffic barrier where Sheridan Road jogged to meet Lake Shore Drive. All along the Drive he saw cars off the road, emergency vehicles with lights flashing, and disaster relief specialists trying to flag him down. He floored Verna Zee’s little car, and no one dared step in front of him. He had most of the lanes open all the way down the Drive, but he heard people shouting, “Stop! Road closed!”

  The radio told him that gridlock within the city proper had ground all fleeing traffic to a halt. One report said it had been that way since the moment of the first blast. Buck wished he had time to scan the exits that led to the beach. There were plenty of places where a Range Rover might have left the road, crashed, or been hidden. If it became clear to Chloe that she could not have made any decent time by heading to the Kennedy or the Eisenhower from The Drake, she might have tried the LSD. But as Buck got to the Michigan Avenue exit that would have taken him within sight of The Drake, he would have had to kill someone or go airborne to go any farther. The barricade that shut down Lake Shore Drive and the exit looked like something from the set of Les Misérables. Squad cars, ambulances, fire trucks, construction and traffic horses, caution lights, you name it, were stretched across the entire area, manned by a busy force of emergency workers. Buck came to a screeching halt, swerving and sliding about fifty feet before his right front tire blew. The car spun as emergency workers danced out of the way.

  Several swore at him, and a woman police officer advanced, gun drawn. Buck started to get out, but she said, “Stay right where you are, pal!” Buck lowered the window with one hand and reached for his press credentials with the other. The policewoman would have none of that. She thrust her weapon through the window and pressed it to his temple. “Both hands where I can see ’em, scumbag!” She opened the door, and Buck executed the difficult procedure of getting out of a small car without the use of his hands. She made him lie flat on the pavement, spread-eagle.

  Two other officers joined the first and roughly frisked Buck.

  “Any guns, knives, needles?”

  Buck went on the offensive. “Nope, just two sets of IDs.”

  The cops pulled a wallet out of each of his back pockets, one containing his own papers, the other the documents of the fictitious Herb Katz.

  “So, which one are you, and what’s the deal?”

  “I’m Cameron Williams, publisher of Global Community Weekly. I report directly to the potentate. The phony ID is to help me get into unsympathetic countries.”

  A young, slender cop pulled Buck’s real ID wallet from the hands of the woman officer. “Let me just have a look at this,” he said with sarcasm. “If you really report to Nicolae Carpathia, you’d have level 2-A clearance, and I don’t see—oops, I guess I do see level 2-A security clearance here.”

  The three officers huddled to peer at the unusual identification card. “You know, carrying phony 2-A security clearance is punishable by death—”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “We aren’t even going to be able to run your license plate, with the computers so jammed.”

  “I can tell you right now,” Buck said, “that I borrowed this car from a friend named Zee. You can check that for sure before you have it junked.”

  “You can’t leave this car here!”

  “What am I gonna do with it?” Buck said. “It’s worthless, it’s got a flat tire, and there’s no way we’re gonna find help for that tonight.”

  “Or for the next two weeks, most likely,” one of the cops said. “So, where were you goin’ in such an all-fired hurry?”

  “The Drake.”

  “Where have you been, pal? Don’t you listen to the news? Most of Michigan Avenue is toast.”

  “Including The Drake?”

  “I don’t know about that, but it can’t be in too good a shape by now.”

  “If I walk up over that rise and get onto Michigan Avenue on foot, am I gonna die of radiation poisoning?”

  “Civil Defense guys tell us there’s no fallout readings. That means this must have been done by the militia, trying to spare as much human life as possible. Anyway, if those bombs had been nuclear, the radiation would have traveled a lot farther than this already.”

  “True enough,” Buck said. “Am I free to go?”

  “No guarantees you’ll get past the guards on Michigan Avenue.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Your best bet is with that clearance card. I sure hope it’s legit, for your sake.”

  Rayford couldn’t stall the ground crew any longer, at least by merely ignoring them. He pulled the stairs in as if to receive the jetway, but did not fully move them out of the way, knowing that the jetway would never connect. Rather than stay and watch, he returned to the cockpit and busied himself. I don’t even want fuel before Amanda’s plane is off the ground.

  It was a full fifteen minutes before Rayford’s usual copilot switched places with his temporary one, and a full flight service crew entered the plane. Every time the ground crew radioed Rayford that they were ready to begin refueling, he told them he wasn’t ready. Finally, an exasperated laborer barked into his radio, “What’s the holdup up there, chief? I was told this was a VIP plane that needed fast service.”

  “You were told wrong. This is a cargo plane, and it’s a new one. We’ve got a learning curve in the cockpit, plus we’re switching crews. Just hold tight. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

  Rayford breathed a sigh of relief twenty minutes later when he discovered that Amanda’s plane was en route to Milwaukee. Now he could refuel, play it by the book, and settle in for the long flight over the Pacific.

  “Some plane, huh?” McCullum said as he checked out the cockpit.

  “Some plane,” Rayford agreed. “It’s been a long day for me, Mac. I’d appreciate a good, long snooze once we get her on course.”

  “My pleasure, Cap. You can sleep the night away for all I care. You want me to come in and wake you for initial descent?”

  “I’m not quite confident enough to leave the cockpit,” Rayford said. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  It suddenly hit Buck that he had taken a huge risk. It wouldn’t be long before Verna Zee learned that he had, at least at one time, been a full-fledged member of New Hope Village Church. He had been so careful about not taking a leadership role there, not speaking in public, not being known to very many people. Now, one of his own employees—and a long-standing enemy at that—would have knowledge that could ruin him, even cost him his life.

  He called Loretta’s home on Verna’s phone. “Loretta,” he said, “I need to speak with Verna.”

  “She’s quite distraught just now,” Loretta said. “I hope you’re prayin’ for this girl.”

  “I certainly will,” Buck said. “How are you two getting along?”

  “As well as can be expected for two complete strangers,” Loretta said. “I’m just tellin’ her my story, as I assumed you wanted me to.”

  Buck was silent. Finally, he said, “Put her on, would you, Loretta?”

  She did, and Buck got straight to the point. “Verna, you need a new car.”

  “Oh no! Cameron, what happened?”

  “It’s only a flat tire, Verna, but it’s going to be impossible to get fixed for several days, and I don’t think your car is worth worrying about.”

  “Well, thanks a lot!”

  “How ’bout I replace it with a better car?”

  “I can’t argue with that,” she muttered.

  “I promise. Now, V
erna, I’m going to abandon this vehicle. Is there anything you need out of it?”

  “Nothing I can think of. There is a hairbrush I really like in the glove box.”

  “Verna!”

  “That does seem a little trivial in light of everything.”

  “No documents, personal belongings, hidden money, anything like that?”

  “No. Just do what you gotta do. It would be nice if I didn’t get in trouble for this.”

  “I’ll leave word with the authorities that when they get around to it they can tow this car to any junkyard and trade whatever the yard gives them for it for the towing fee.”

  “Cameron,” Verna whispered, “this woman is one strange, old bird.”

  “I don’t have time to discuss that with you now, Verna. But give her a chance. She’s sweet. And she is providing shelter.”

  “No, you misunderstand. I’m not saying she isn’t wonderful. I’m just saying she’s got some really strange ideas.”

  As Buck scrambled over an embankment to bring Michigan Avenue into view, he fulfilled his promise to Loretta that he would pray for Verna. Exactly how to pray, he didn’t know. Either she becomes a believer, or I’m dead.

  All Buck could think of as he came into sight of the dozens of bombed-out buildings along Michigan Avenue and knew that they continued almost the entire length of the Magnificent Mile, was his experience in Israel when Russia had attacked. He could imagine the sound of the bombs and the searing heat of the flames, but in that instance the Holy Land had been miraculously delivered from damage. There was no such intervention here. He hit the redial button on Verna’s phone, forgetting that he had last called Loretta, not the cell phone in the Range Rover.